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Stephen King's "It" and "Psycho"

posted 7 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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As I post this(September 9, 2017), a new film has opened of Stephen King's "It." I believe that is what they are calling it, though really this is only the first part, when all the protagonists are pre-teen kids. (A Part Two will need to be made to cast those kids as adults and THAT parlor game has begun.)

But here's the genuinely shocking this: It has opened HUGE: $100 million for the US weekend. Its breaking those records that usually get broken these days: biggest September opening, biggest R-rated opening...

...biggest horror opening.

Hey. I guess that puts It in line with Psycho, Rosemary's Baby, The Exorcist, Jaws and whatever followed those.

But is it that GOOD?

I dunno. I haven't seen it. I DID read the novel. And I DID see the 1990 TV mini-series version that was crippled from the get-go by being on ABC broadcast TV(where, Stephen King noted, horror was never allowed to BE horror.)

Book and mini-series were....just OK to me. Like I matter.

For "It" is one of those stories where the villainous monster of the piece(Pennywise the Clown, don't you know?) really does kill somebody in the opening scene and yet thereafter(as I recall) functions as more of a psychological/fantastical vision/symbol than a killer. As I recall(NO SPOILER HERE), Pennywise starts as a clown but finishes as...something else entirely. And honestly, I can't remember who and how "It" kills again. (Says someone publicizing this movie: "It" isn't a person; its the embodiment of evil itself.")

There have been Stephen King movies and TV miniseries for decades now(starting with Brian DePalma's Carrie in 1976 and including "Mr. Mercedes" right now on ...well some application I don't know how to USE.)..but why has IT opened so big?

Theories: Its had the hell promoted out of it. Anybody who saw the bowdlerdized 1990 TV version HAS to want an R-rated version with more graphic bite to it. Clowns are the IT villain(not just the "It" villain of our time(Creepy clowns, killer clowns -- I hear Clowns actually haunt American Horror Story this season.) You'd think Clowns had outworn their horror welcome but no - they're the new Zombies. And also: ticket prices are higher and population has grown since the days of Psycho and The Exorcist. But still...horror just ain't that big a draw anymore.

Wacky thought in passing: what if Marion Crane and Arbogast had been killed by a knife-wielding CLOWN? Scarier that Old Lady Bates?

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Side-note:

Alfred Hitchcock and Stephen King.

They have a lot in common, yes?

Brand names. In the thriller genre. Massive success. In films. On TV. In books.

They have a lot NOT in common, yes?

Stephen King is a novelist, not a film director. Many films have been made of his works, but he's had little creative control over them. The book is his kingdom just as the movie was Hitchcock's.

And really, let's face it, Stephen King is a HORROR specialist. Its almost all he does(yep I know about Shawshank, The Green Mile, Stand by Me.) Hitchcock did horror definitely one time(Psycho) arguably two(The Birds, which has a SciFi/Fantasy aspect to it) possibly three(Frenzy, only because of the violence of the shown killing and the macabre potato truck scene.) But no one can contemplate a Stephen King novel driving The 39 Steps or Rebecca or Notorious or Under Capricorn or The Paradine Case or I Confess or To Catch a Thief or Topaz. (And King uncharitable called Family Plot, "A Thanksgiving Turkey.")

Indeed a whole lotta Stephen King's horror novels are FANTASY horror novels -- like It -- in which the killers are ghosts or "visions" or unseen Ids. Or you've got Carrie, an ostensible horror film founded on the girl's "magical" ability to make things move through air. That's not Hitchcock...that's Disney.

A few times, Stephen King has gone the "straight psycho thriller route" and seemed like a Hitchcock copycat. I'd say that "Misery" is the big one in that regard -- a psychopathic female fan keeps her crippled favorite author prisoner in her house and does horrible things to him. (An Arbogast-substitute cop shows up to investigate, and dies.) But I"ve always said that "Misery" is "too suspenseful" to be a Hitchcock tale. Its claustrophobic, grim, not so much never leaves the house(Rope and Dial M and Rear Window and Lifeboat were like that) as much as it never gets more characters into the act.

Anyway, its a weird thing: Stephen King and Alfred Hitchcock WILL likely always be linked as being "kind of the same" in some people's minds, but I would almost entirely base that links as being from Stephen King to ONLY "Psycho" AND to Hitchcock's macabre TV show, which told stories on film much as King tells stories on paper.

Still, hail the movie of "IT": It seems to have made horror matter again for the mainstream audience. Like Psycho did....

[–] swanstep (2715) 7 years ago

Still, hail the movie of "IT": It seems to have made horror matter again for the mainstream audience. Like Psycho did....

This year has seen a series of horror hits (both commercially and critically), see esp. Split and Get Out, and even Life (an Alien/Thing-wannabe that was more fun than Alien Covenant), and the past few years have seen a number of semi-hits with critical acclaim, see esp. It Follows, The Babadook and The Witch and also stuff like Don't Breathe. And beyond these highlights there have been *lots* of pretty interesting small horrors - more than I've been able to see - often a bit arty and not entirely successful, e.g., recently Nocturama, Raw, Prevenge, I am the Pretty Thing That lives in the House (by Osgood Perkins), Train to Busan, Goodnight Mommy, The Eyes of My Mother, Darling, and so on that have definitely got *me* and others thinking about horror as a useful live genre again.

So I guess what I'm saying is that It (2017) isn't an outlier although the size of its immediate box office of course points to the special place It and Stephen King have in the culture.

One big indicator that It (2017) might explode was the success of Netflix's set-in-the-'80s Stranger Things' first season last year. The second season is coming this Halloween and people are *super*-into-it. Check out this trailer and read through some of the 1000s of comments to get a sense:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgS2L7WPIO4

Stranger Things mashes up King and Spielberg to *great* effect and one of its kid leads is one of the leads in It (2017).

[–] swanstep (2715) 7 years ago

Alfred Hitchcock and Stephen King.
They have a lot in common, yes?
Brand names. In the thriller genre. Massive success. In films. On TV. In books.

One thing I hadn't quite appreciated until recently was just how *much* Stephen King stuff got made in the '80s and '90s:
After Carrie (1976) is a huge success then, with a few years lag for production, the floodgates open:

Salem's Lot (1979)-TV
The Shining (1980)
The Dead Zone (1983)
Creepshow (1982)
Cujo (1983)
Christine (1983)
The Langoliers (1995)
Firestarter (1984)
Children of the Corn (1984)
Cat's Eye (1985)
Stand By Me (1986)
Return to Salem's Lot (1987 - TV)
Creepshow 2 (1987)
The Running Man (1987)
IT (1990)
Tales from the Darkside (1990)
Misery (1990)
Graveyard Shift (1990)
Sometimes They Come Back (1991)
Golden Years (1991-Tv)
Sleepwalkers (1992)
Shawshank Redemption (1994)
Needful Things (1993)
The Dark Half (1993)
The Tommyknockers (1993)
The Stand (1994-TV)
Dolores Claiborne (1995)
The Mangler (1995)
Thinner (1996)
Sometimes They Come Back Again (1996)
The Shining (1997-TV)
The Night Flier (1997)
Apt Pupil (1998)

After that the pace slows *a little*.... but, wow, that's a lot of King.

[–] AngularTurnip (3337) 7 years ago

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

You wouldn't have Stephen King if King hadn't devoured the works of Richard Matheson, Robert Bloch (the author of "Psycho"), Jim Thompson, Ray Bradbury, Charles Beaumont, and many other gifted pulp writers.

---

Yes. To his credit though, in King's non-fiction book about horror/fantasy "works"(books, films, TV shows, RADIO SHOWS)..."Danse Macabre," I believe that King names all of those folks, and more, and praises them and cites him as influences.

On topic, King makes sure to start his critique of Psycho with praise for Bloch's entire career and praise for Bloch's novel BEFORE moving on the Hitchcock adaptation (which, King rather wrongly believes "plays like a made-for-TV movie in content except for the shower murder, but is light years ahead in style.")

King also quite rightly traces the premise of Psycho (or rather its twist reveal) to two forbears: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and -- more directly -- The Wolf Man(Lon Chaney Jr. film.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

I know that Stephen King enjoys a certain God-like status in horror circles. His writings power everything else: movies, TV series and mini series, on broadcast and cable.

But you look at that list and two things stand out:

ONE: He was/is incredibly prolific.

TWO: Because he is so prolific, a lot of his work is -- in movie terms -- B level or lower, even if well-written. Quite frankly, a lot of those movies got bad reviews and poor box office. But King's a brand name, so making his stuff is a good shot at, well, breaking even. I guess you could say he's a billionaire purveyor of pulp. Which fits our times.

And which makes the success of "IT" all the more surprising. Oh, here's the usual fall knockoff of some new or old Stephen King title -- no, wait, WHAT?

---

At the store the other day, I saw a specialty magazine tie-in to IT with some pages on the selected "great works of Stephen King at the movies." THAT list was meaty -- and much smaller than the list above:

Carrie
The Shining
Cujo
Christine
Stand By Me
Misery
The Shawshank Redemption
The Green Mile

And even THAT list is a little suspect. Neither Cujo nor Christine feel much bigger than Bs.

Also interesting: "At the movies," King has done almost as well with non-horror material as the other: Stand by Me, The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile(with Tom "Superstar" Hanks in a King movie, joining Jack Nicholson as the only other than I can recognize.) Well George C. Scott was in Firestarter but that was terrible.

All of this is to say that Stephen King is an interesting pop artist for our times. Undeniably a success and a Brand Name -- but having so over-produced properties that he's rather damaged goods as a QUALITY artist. Hitchcock sort of did that to himself at the end with the run from Marnie through Topaz, but it feels like King has been producing bad works as long as he has been producing good works...

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

A side note on "Mr. Mercedes," which is hitting concurrently with It, and evidently Stranger Things. (Man, this guy is everywhere!)

I used to read King's novels back in the 80's, but eventually stopped. Too long, not much excitement to it for me.

But I was hooked to buy Mr. Mercedes a few years back for these reasons: it was short. It was billed as a "psycho killer novel in the Misery tradition" -- no ghosts, no telekinesis.

So I bought it, and found it gripping and then tossed it away rather angrily at the end because...

...it didn't end. The big confrontation one is waiting the entire book for -- the retired-cop good guy versus the young serial killer bad guy --- didn't really happen and it was clear that another book was coming to continue the story.

I'm not interested.

The book opens with the killer mowing down a crowd of low-income job-seekers with a Mercedes and then turns into a "PC chat room cat and mouse" of the cop and serial killer trading insults at each other on the net. I'm afraid the great risk of doing this(from the cop's side) manifests: he makes the killer so mad with his emascualating insults that the killer goes after the cop's loved ones.

Why don't the cops THINK of that?

The only other notable and disturbing element to me of "Mr. Mercedes" is the titular psycho has on his PC screensavers nothing but still frames of massacre scenes from "The Wild Bunch."

Hey, NON-psychos like that movie , too!

I'd like to watch Mr. Mercedes in the filmed version, but evidently I have to special order it for my laptop or something. Sheesh. I like the actor playing the cop -- Brendan Gleeson -- middle-aged, big guy, paunchy, but...chicks dig him. My kind of guy.

[–] swanstep (2715) 7 years ago

But I was hooked to buy Mr. Mercedes a few years back for these reasons: it was short. It was billed as a "psycho killer novel in the Misery tradition" -- no ghosts, no telekinesis.
So I bought it, and found it gripping and then tossed it away rather angrily at the end because......it didn't end.

The ending of It (1990 - TV) was disappointing IIRC. I forget the details of how the endings of the adult and kid stories wrap around each other but the big element they had in common was that Pennywise the clown kind of disappears, being revelaed as a projection of some sort of the *real* bad guy, which is some kind of big spider-alien. Even allowing for some clunkiness in sfx of the time, the spider-alien felt imminently killable in a way that Pennywise didn't. Put another way, Pennywise felt like real '70s/'80s child-snatcher/pedophile nightmare-fuel whereas the spider-alien felt like something out of a Them!/Mant!-style/'50s monster matinee. Much less scary basically.

I guess endings for Horror and perhaps especially monster-based Horrors are tricky: things tend to have to be revealed and explained by the end (for there to be even a *chance* of the good guys winning/escaping) and losing much of the mystery always tends to ramp down the terror (in many cases even risks laughter).

[–] movieghoul (213) 7 years ago

King himself has claimed that people gravitate toward the horror genre in times of real life crisis. So possibly many of those folks in the US who went to see It last weekend did so to get away from the ubiquitous scenes of hurricane devastation.